(Not just about The Beatles!)

June 1, 2017

The Return – and a new mixtape!

So I’ve been a tad AWOL for the…entirety of this year. Apologies! As I’ve begun to enter my final years of high school and the work has become increasingly demanding, I’ve been forced to spend the time I would have previously spent on this blog revising for Maths tests and organising my Art folio. But good news! I’ve been tapping away at my laptop and planning some posts so that hopefully there will not be another six month hiatus in the near future of this website. It’s good to be back – hopefully some of you are still around!

Anyway, I’ve been working away at a massive thinkpiece about a very special concert I saw several weeks ago for a little while now, and hopefully that should go up in the next few weeks or so – and on top of this, I have plenty of other half-formed drafts to keep me going until the school holidays afford me some free time! But in the meanwhile, I thought I’d update you on what I’ve been listening to lately, and give you some teasers as to what the next few months over here might involve…

‘Birdland’ – Patti Smith

If you’ve been reading this blog for a couple of years, you’ll know that I really, really, really love Patti Smith – her work has affected me so much, and I consider her to be my greatest hero maybe only second to Bowie. So I can’t imagine you’ll be overly surprised to hear that, a few weeks ago, I flew to another city to stand twenty metres away from her while she performed Horses – and that I consider that night to be among the most beautiful and incredible experiences of my life to date. I’ll be exploring this event and its effect on my life in further detail in the aforementioned thinkpiece, but it was just so enthralling and moving and massive to be dancing down the aisles like I haven’t since I was six while my greatest living hero stood mere metres away from you and sang lyrics that have changed my life! There was this especially incredible moment when she was performing ‘Birdland’ that just cemented to me just how surreal and amazing what I was seeing was – Patti was just surrounded by this aura of stage lighting, and the song was reaching peak intensity, and everyone in the stalls just rushed enmasse, at once, to the stage, and Patti was yelling these incredible improvised lyrics into the microphone, and the entire audience were convulsing to the beat. It was beautiful. Read more about it in a few days or so when I finally finish and publish my post!

‘No Plan’ – David Bowie

This song is here for three reasons: a) I travelled to England a few months back, where I was beyond lucky enough to see Lazarus at the King’s Cross Theatre. Although I’d wanted to see it ever since its original New York run was announced, I never really thought that I actually would – not to mention the extra meaning the musical undoubtedly has carried since January 2016 – so to say that I found this to be an incredibly special and moving experience would be an understatement. The above was one of the three new songs that he wrote specifically for it, and I even hung off listening to the soundtrack when it was released several months before I saw the show so I could experience these new tunes just how Bowie wanted. All of these songs are amazing – Bowie’s original versions of them even more so – but ‘No Plan’ might be my favourite of them all… b) I preordered the No Plan EP (the release in which these original versions are housed) in its fanciest vinyl incarnation – the vinyl is white and it’s numbered and it comes with fancy lithographs – many, many months ago, and it’s supposed to arrive this week!!! And c) because it’s nearly a year and a half since Bowie passed away, so I plan on finishing and publishing the post on him that I meant to write in January but didn’t have mange to finish in time then. I also plan on showing you guys some of my pics from England, so watch this space!

‘Shadow’ – Chromatics

Has anybody else been watching Twin Peaks: The Return? I certainly have! One of my many, many favourite parts of the new series (Andy and Lucy’s son and “Helloooooo!” notwithstanding!) is the way that each episode ends with a different band performing a suitably Angelo Badalamenti-esque tune at The Roadhouse – it’s so removed from the insanity that is the rest of the show’s events, giving us a chance to debrief, and it’s just a really cool way to showcase some new tunes! The above is probably my favourite of the ones that have been showcased so far – the song is pure floaty, synthy dream pop (think Julee Cruise’s ‘The Nightingale’ from the original series), and singer Ruth Radalet looks so much like Nico I did a double-take when I first saw her onscreen, and Shelly’s (sarcastic?) remark that “James has always been cool” during its performance helped a bit too… I can’t wait to see where the series goes from here, though – and my excitement about it means that a post about it will probably be forthcoming in the somewhat near future!

‘Leaving LA’ – Father John Misty

When Father John Misty released I Love You, Honeybear back in 2015, I was kinda confused as to why the entirety of the music press was so obsessed with it – I mean, it sounded pretty enough and all, but at the time, fuzzed-up psychedelic rock (which, of course, is still my thing too!) interested me a lot more than existentialist piano ballads, and up until a few months ago I always thought that it was a little overrated. Anyway, we recently acquired a copy of the aforementioned Honeybear, and something just clicked – something about the lyrics and the melodies and the production and just the essence of each song welled up and burst into one of the most beautiful things I’d ever heard. ‘Leaving LA’, from this year’s Honeybear-followup Pure Comedy, somehow manages to supersede what I thought would be the near-impossible task of bettering its predecessor. My first listening of it easily became among the most magical and incredible 13 minutes of my life, and it – in all of its beautiful instrumentation, and oh, among the most literate and incredible lyrics of the past twenty years – undoubtedly deserves a place in pop music’s grandest songbooks alongside ‘Stairway To Heaven’ and the rest. It’s also restored my interest in new music – something which my aforementioned school-related busy-ness has prevented me from discovering as much as I’d like – and so there might just be a post on some of my current faves sometime soon, too!

‘I Don’t Wanna Be Too Cool’ – Kate Fagan & ‘Button Up’ – The Bloods

Although I haven’t been discovering as much music this year as I’d like, I have been researching and unearthing some obscure American postpunk gems over the past few months. Unlike its oft-poppier English counterpart (which I also love – don’t get me wrong!), this incarnation of the movement was edgier than punk itself, incorporating obscure and abrasive instrumentation, primal rhythms, droning vocals, objectively bad production techniques, weird intellectualist lyrics, even oddly-juxtaposed disco guitar licks – and it’s just the absolute coolest thing ever! It was no surprise to me to learn that many of these musicians were also underground visual artists and filmmakers as well – their music easily fits as an extension of the ideas and aesthetics explored within these. Another aspect of the movement that I also particularly love was its empowerment of women; every single one of the bands I’ve discovered had at least one female member, and it’s really quite something to see how these artists could be as overtly feminine as they wished and still be considered every bit as valid as their male colleagues – especially after realising that it seems like we’ve almost backpedalled on this a bit in comparison. The above songs are two that I feel best exhibit the movement in all of its noisy, feminine glory, and I haven’t been able to stop listening to them – ‘Button Up’ especially! – for ages… Maybe I’ll compile my finds into a post sometime soon as well, if you like!

‘Hospital’ – The Modern Lovers

The other band that I’ve really gotten into over the past few months is The Modern Lovers. Founded by a Lou Reed-obsessed Jonathan Richman in Boston in the early ’70s, they were no more by 1974 and their only album was released in 1976 – but they, like The Velvets (and Big Star), have gone on to be credited with inventing much of what we call “alternative music” today. The main reason, though, that I’ve come to love them so much is the way that they contrast nerdiness with edginess, and how relatable I find this – while I adore the music and lyrics of Reed/Alex Chilton/Iggy Pop/Patti Smith/et al, I’m the first to admit that I otherwise fit the stereotype of the socially awkward goody two shoes perfectly, this something that tends to be derided in the music that I like. It’s nice to find a similar band from this era that not only revels in this kind of nerdy awkwardness, but acknowledges that you can both be this way inclined AND love edgy underground music – they’re pretty much the most relatable band I’ve ever discovered! I especially love this particular song, and I haven’t really stopped listening to it for the past few weeks…

‘Let’s Go To Bed’ – The Cure

Not particularly related to anything other than the fact that I started working at my school’s canteen one day a week, and the woman who runs it very kindly gave me a copy of The Cure’s Greatest Hits – meaning that I now own this song and can jump around my living room to it any time I wish! This makes me very pleased indeed…

Here’s some “old” faves that I may or may not have mentioned before on here that have also been in high circulation on my record player/stereo/YouTube account, too:

Anyway, it’s nice to be back – hopefully I’ll be posting and chatting to you guys a lot more again soon! Feel free to let me know what you’ve been listening/watching/reading/whatever-ing, lately, too! 🙂

Like this:

LikeLoading...

Related

Published by tangerinetrees99

I'm Adela Teubner, a student from Australia! My blog, All You Need Is The Beatles, went live in June 2014, where I wrote about my then-favourite band, The Beatles (hence its name!), and published my own poetry. However, these days, it's a space where I sporadically ramble about all the music, TV, film, literature, and fashion I love when I'm not too occupied with homework. You can also follow my adventures at the Felicitas Collective, The Mostly Books Blog, and on Instagram, YouTube, Pinterest, and Spotify! View all posts by tangerinetrees99

3 thoughts on “The Return – and a new mixtape!”

Naturally, I’m delighted to see the cure & bowie appear in the mix!
The modern lovers were new to me last year but I quite liked that album – hadn’t thought about the nerdy/edgy contrast, I might like it even more if I revisit now!

I’m glad you enjoyed the tape – also naturally, it wouldn’t be a mixtape by me if it didn’t involve Bowie and Robert!! The Lovers are new to me too (I think I might’ve even discovered them thru your blog, so thank you!!), and something just kind of clicked when I heard them – it’s just such an interesting take on music that would’ve been mocked by the bands they loved but is far more relatable and fascinating (otherwise they might as well have just been a Velvets cover band!) for it, they’re so cool!! 🙂

I remember being surprised that the album sat on the shelf from 1972-1976 before finally being released – often that’s not a good sign (some songs are better left unreleased!), but in the case of the Modern Lovers, for me, the delay in releasing only added to its appeal!